January 1 - "Brand New Horror"

“Best New Horror”
by Joe Hill
20th Century Ghosts (2007)

* * (Okay) Horror

The editor of Best New Horror, a short story anthology, comes across the story of Buttonboy that rekindles his excitement for work - his love of stories and horror - but has difficulty tracking down its elusive author. Stories this scary come from somewhere – from someone. But is that really a someone you want to meet?

I don’t know that I would have chosen as leading story in the collection, or even included such a superlative such as “best” in the title, a story that was only okay, but ultimately unsatisfying. The snippets of the story-in-the-story, “Buttonboy: A Love Story,” were examples of all I don’t enjoy in horror – mindless torture/porn. The surprise, shock ending was obvious from the outset. I don’t know if I’ve just seen too many horror movies (a problem shared by the main character of the story, and his reason for loss of love of the job and his end of the story revelations), but this story fell flat on its own, trying-to-be-clever face.

That said, there was a description of a boy’s soul leaving through his pin-punctured eyes, sounding like breath over an empty Coke bottle, that I thought was pretty perfect.